Wealden Times | WT172 | June 2016 | Kitchen & Bathroom supplement inside

Above: The drawing room contains matching French Deco wall and ceiling lights from WBR Interiors, a favourite shop on Wandsworth Bridge Road.
Underneath is a coffee table constructed from a sheet of glass atop four Kartell Stone stools
However, what it didn’t know was that, on one
summer’s day in 2004, Anthony and Simon would come
down to Hawkhurst to stay with friends Siobhan and
Charles Mavor. Indeed, why should it care? It should
have cared because Anthony and Simon were owners
of one of London’s best-known restaurants, Nikita’s in
Chelsea. And they were looking for something new.
“We decided that, for us, Nikita’s had run its
course – we had run it for five years – and we were
thinking of something in the country,” says Simon.
“We wanted to be within an hour of London and
when we came down to see Siobhan and Charles
we saw how beautiful it was around here.”
The couple’s problem in finding the right property
stemmed from the fact that so many period pubs
in the Weald are beamed with low ceiling and
they wanted something with high ceiling and as
much light as possible. “To start with, everything
we saw was just too pokey,” says Anthony.
And then they saw the White Horse, its lovely
Georgian proportions and spectacular view and that was
it. They bought the property and spent four months
completely renovating it. The property must have
wondered what had hit it. In a few short months it went
from a traditional British pub to stylish restaurant run
by two of London’s top restaurateurs. They opened in
The drawing room, with its French windows to the lovely garden
and killer view across as far at Brightling, is a joy
63 www.wealdentimes.co.uk